This past week, Orin and I had the great privilege of serving in a variety of roles at the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis. For much of Thursday, Friday and Saturday, he and I were on a dead-run hosting the Music and Message Stage, leading music at two Masses, and even getting to do…

Well, Oddwalk is pretty busy right now, gearing up for NCYC in couple weeks, and largely for the Music and Message Stage we have helped put together and will be hosting and emcees for. That’s why this Jesus-Justice-Joy post is a day late, and relatively brief.

Part of our getting ready for these things, as it often is, is putting together a slide show we hope adds to the engagement and humor of our being in front of folks. The slide here presented won’t make a lot of sense out of context, but we still won’t bother giving you any, because you don’t need any for it to be funny anyway.

Yes, that’s Young Orin, and no, his speech bubble is not factual. Pretty sure, anyway.

Today’s turn in our J-J-J rotation is “Jesus” and I (Orin) am struck by, given this work we’ve just been doing, how far I’ve coming in letting myself be presented publicly as a bit foolish, or someone to be derided for. I don’t think some years ago I would have ever let that happen, but these days, especially in the name of Jesus, it’s quite okay, perhaps even preferred.

By society’s eyes, Jesus was made a fool of during his passion and death – ridiculed and subjected to public scorn, and to a much lesser extant most of the time, that is still a part of being a Christian today – being a witness to Christ demands it, in our effort to become more like him.

So, enjoy this passing glimpse of Young Orin, and know that when this photo is on display before 25,000 young folks gathered at NCYC in a couple weeks, it’s all for the greater glory of God.

(This article was written to be published this coming Monday, August 21, but we decided to post it a few days early due to the tremendous interest in the upcoming total solar eclipse.)

My name is Andy Puckett, and I’m a professional astronomer. When I look at the world around me, I tend to see the big picture. The Sun “rises and sets” because the Earth rotates. Seasons change due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis. The position and phase of the Moon are based on the predictable motions of the Moon and the Earth. And all of these are based on the physical laws of the universe: motion, gravitation, acceleration.

I am also a Christian, so I see God’s hand in all of this. I know that He doesn’t move the moons and planets capriciously. I see the order and predictability of their motions. And I believe that God wrote the underlying laws of motion, and that he also gave me the curiosity to try to understand them.

Today (August 21st), many of you may get to see a total eclipse of the Sun. That’s when the Moon gets directly between the Earth and the Sun, and you find yourself in the darkest part of the Moon’s shadow. The Moon is 400 times smaller than the Sun but also 400 times closer, which is the happy “coincidence” that makes this amazing event possible. But the Moon’s orbital plane doesn’t line up perfectly with the Earth’s, which is what prevents solar eclipses from being regular monthly events.

It’s very rare that a total solar eclipse passes within driving distance of your house, and even rarer for one to pass directly over where you live. If you do happen to be within the 70-mile wide “path of totality” today, you’re in for a treat! For up to 2 minutes 40 seconds, it will become as dark as night; the wind will get cooler and change direction; the solar corona will pop into view; and everyone around you will know that they’ve experienced something extraordinary.

Total Solar Eclipse

I’m a scientist, and there’s great science to be done during an eclipse, but that’s not my plan for today. I’ve been looking forward to this eclipse for 20 years, so I’m going to just take it all in. And I’m going to make sure my family gets to experience it safely, including my brother-in-law Shannon and all of our kids. I hope to help them see the big picture, and God’s hand in all of it.

A note from Shannon about this week’s article:

Andy Puckett is my brother-in-law and the Assistant Professor of Astrophysics at Columbus State University in Columbus, GA. Andy is also a practicing Catholic and is perhaps more excited than anyone else I know about the much-anticipated Total Solar Eclipse, set to dazzle us this Monday. For this article, Orin and I asked Andy to do an eclipse-related followup to Orin’s joy-themed article from a few weeks ago, entitled “Ongoing Creation”. In that article, Orin asked the question: “What is it that you are doing these days, using the creative gifts given you, at the service of God and the Church?” In our view, through the witness of his Catholic faith and the joyful enthusiasm with which he shares his knowledge of our physical universe, Andy is daily answering God’s call to glorify God with his life. We thank Andy for taking the time to write this for us.

Easter greetings everyone. While pondering recently what to write about today, I noticed several pieces on social media, as we celebrate these early days of Eastertide, raising Mary Magdalene up as an important part of our faith owing to her role in life of Christ.

The first rightly observes that, without her preaching the risen Lord to the Apostles, Easter Day would have been, and would be, very different. She is often called “The First Apostle” or “Apostle to the Apostles” with good reason.

Seen retweeted a few times…

The second suggests at least a darker possibility: that because such an important role in the resurrection story fell to a woman, some unnamed unknown men of the Church attempted to devalue her worth by conflating her with adulterous women found elsewhere in the Gospels – a practice that lately has been found without merit.

So today, as our weekly articles turn their attention to Justice, let us turn our attention to women of the Church. I don’t wish to enter the fray at this moment as to the roles of women in the Church – liturgically or otherwise. I do wish to point out that, as such discussions occur, we should all be mindful to not devalue someone – anyone – by seeing them in such a limited capacity: that one’s worth is defined only by something amazing they did on their best day or by something horrible done on their worst day; that one’s worth is defined only by their capacity to give birth or their inability to; that one’s worth is defined merely by things we discern with our human senses.

Our value, our Christian dignity, comes from our creation by God in God’s image and likeness, and that God comes to dwell in us: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” (1 Cor. 6:19) Notably, the scripture doesn’t delineate here based on gender or any other divisions.

This worth comes with two other important attributes. First, it can’t be taken away from us unless we so permit that to happen. As long as we remember who we are in God’s eyes, the opinions, the labels, the divisions that humanity creates matter far less, if they matter at all. Second, once we train ourselves to know this worth both in ourselves and in one other, the world becomes a very different place – a place of justice, love, and peace.

Continued Easter blessings, Oddwalkia. Celebrate the risen lord with joy and gladness in your hearts!

I expect a lot of our readers will already know that I (Orin) am a full-time parish music director (Sts. Joachim and Ann in St. Charles County) in addition to Oddwalking and lots of other things. One of my roles at the parish is directing the Resurrection Choir, which sings at funerals and memorial masses…

Hello everyone! Today, October 24, 2014, is the 10th anniversary of the very first Oddwalk performance!

As we said on our 5th anniversary, “Whenever Orin and Shannon are asked about Oddwalk’s origins, how we met, etc., we find ourselves using language as if we’re talking about a wedding or a marriage. While that analogy is certainly more different than it is like, Oddwalk is certainly about relationship and relationships, and it is a day to celebrate just that!”

To celebrate this milestone, we’ve put together a brief pOddcast from that very first Oddwalk show for the diocese of New Ulm, Minnesota. You can listen to it here, on our pOddcast page, via iTunes, etc. You’ll here early versions of your favorite Oddwalk songs, snippets of stories, watching the 2014 world series, and a whole lot more! Maybe you’ll discover, as we did: the more things change the more things stay the same!

Play now: 10th Oddiversary Podcast!

Additionally, on our Facebook page for the last 10 days, we’ve been posting highlights of the last decade – check those out, and “like” us over there!

Thanks for the opportunities, everyone, to travel as much as we have and to offer our talents and services for the building of the Kingdom. Looking forward to another great 10 years, maybe more!

A few months back, iLike discontinued the service that provided our app for the iPhone. If you still have it, it works, but we can’t do any updating of it, and if you don’t already have it, you can’t get it anymore either. Bah. So, we’ve found a free, cross-platform way to bring all of…

Hope you all are having a wonderful, and relatively prank-free day. Since we aren’t planning anything sinister for this year, we thought we would revisit a few Oddwalk posts from April Fools Days past: 2009 2008 2004

Having *finally* been featured – long overdue, if you ask us – on that show the kids all love so much, “Glee,” we thought is was worth a repost of our version of Sonseed’s “Jesus is a Friend of Mine,” recorded now almost 2.5 years ago. It has 30,000 views now, far more than any…

Of course, Christ’s selfless death on the cross in the pinnacle of loving acts, but this modern-day story comes close. And to top it off, it’s a former-neghbor and still-friend of Orin and Erin’s that is the center of this story! Watch the video report below, or click here for the article. Reminds me of…

Here’s a quick clip of some Israelite slaves lamenting their pre-Moses lot in life. Remember, one week before this was recorded, these folks didn’t even know the show, let alone which part they might have! Youth Sing Praise really is a miracle each year. Thanks to Erin B for recording!

… an inflatable keytar. Yes, that’s right. Our potential winning visitor hails from perhaps the Stanford Medical School and/or Redwood City, CA, and at 2:15pm pacific time, came to our blog while searching google for “inflatable keytar” – no kidding. See more incriminating stats to the left. So, should this person identify themselves in the…

… that Noah Cerneka is the son of Shannon and the Godson of Orin (and of course son of Erin C and Godson of Erin H as well), look no further than this video snapped by Erin C as ultimate proof. Maybe, first, listen to this little clip of a song from our first album…